April 28, 2006

Here's the link if you want to listen. No video, so you'll just have to picture a bunch of lawproffy types in a cavernous auditorium at Harvard Law School.

Next to me is Randy Barnett, who's reading my blogging on his Palm Treo 650, showing me that he's reading it, taking a picture of me blogging, and emailing me the picture to blog. Is that self-referential enough for you? It's really, really bloggy. And we're just getting started.

The photo:

Don't you love technology?

Gordon Smith is nudging me and saying pay attention. Good point! Live-blogging should entail paying attention. Paul Caron is talking. And Gordon is also live-blogging. Do we care about what the speaker is saying or what the bloggers in the audience are blogging about it and linking to each other and blogging about the blogging?

9:13: Here's the agenda, listing the times of the speakers. Paul Caron is doing the introduction, assembling a lot of statistics about blogging and scholarship. Paul used a lot of PowerPoint slides. There's a huge screen, and I haven't got slides myself. Now Doug Berman is speaking, and he's just displaying his blog on the big screen. So I guess I'll end up putting mine up too and that will mean this very post will be up on the screen. Should lawprofs be blogging?, Doug Berman asks. Hey, Randy's commenting on this post, I just noticed, causing him to turn that Treo thing away. I have to read it the tech way, after he posts it here.

9:22: Here's Gordon's live-blogging post. He notes the many empty seats in the room, so we big bloggers aren't such a huge draw. Somehow, I think the students are probably sleeping at this hour. Or are they studying or taking exams? Is anyone listening to the live feed? Gordon is putting together his PowerPoint slides, Googling for a picture for "network."

9:27: Berman rejects the notion that lawprof blogs are like listening in on a faculty lounge conversation. "It's not as robust and engaged as the law professor blogosphere is." I'm trying to think if things in Lubar Lounge are "robust and engaged." Randy tells me he can't post his comment because he doesn't have a Blogger account. Email it to me:

It is divine to be seated next to Ms. Althouse watching her at work . . . I mean at play. Maybe she will let me borrow her PC so I can post a link on the Volokh Conspiracy to her blogging here. I have not yet installed a blogging client on my Treo 650.

He used the Althouse code word "divine," but he called my PowerBook a "PC."

9:37: Larry Solum says blogs aren't changing anything about legal scholarship but are manifestations of other changes. He loves very long law review articles, but concedes that no one reads them. Yes, it's a funny thing about blogging: it's read. You have these elaborately written things that aren't read, and then everyone thinks of blogging as just thrown together. But short posts can be carefully written, and they can embody ideas that you have thought through in more formal scholarship. Larry's saying that short form "disintermediated" writing is a trend, and not just in blogging. He'd like to see a Wiki law encyclopedia.

9:47: Kate Litvak, commenting on the laptops in the audience, says she's going to ban computers in the classroom. Is she trying to tell me to to close the laptop? She's the panelist who doesn't have a blog.

10:05: Paul Butler starts the commentary on the articles, which he finds insufficiently excited about blogging. He says: "The blog is walking up to legal scholarship and slapping it in the face."

10:17: Jim Lindgren: "Why do you want to know if it's scholarship or not?"

10:35: Ellen Podgor says that before she started blogging -- at White Collar Crime Prof Blog -- she had never been quoted in the Wall Street Journal. She teaches at Stetson, note well. The reporters used to call lawprofs based on their law schools. Blogging can shake up the hierarchy and give different people a chance to be heard.

11:10: Gail Heriot says blogging is fun and lawprofs can do whatever we want. That's stating the problem plainly! "The legal academy has turned inward on itself," she says, describing what legal scholarship has become. It doesn't speak to lawyers and judges. Blogging lets the lawprof get back in connection with the practical legal world, to influence people on the issues of the day.

11:22: The audience has gotten a lot bigger since the break. I wonder if people in the room are reading my simulblogging. Leave a comment! Or are you going to tell me you can't register with Blogger? Email me, then (my last name, followed by @wisc.edu).

11:26: Orin Kerr starts off funny. He uses the computer on the lectern to check his Site Meter statistics. He's all, "Hold on just a sec..." Then he pretends he's accidentally brought his old notes from a 1999 conference called "Listservship: How Email Is Changing Legal Scholarship).

11:35: Orin ends by saying that if anyone is live-blogging the conference, we should say that he got thunderous applause and a standing ovation. Now, Gordon is up and he starts by displaying this post of mine, photo and all. He calls attention to the part about how he's putting together his PowerPoint slides, and then that's his intro into his PowerPoint presentation.

11:45: Gordon does care about whether blogging is considered scholarship, because he wants to legitimate what he's doing. Randy Barnett is next, and he frets about the "flight from scholarship," which has long been the "dirty little secret" of lawprofdom. "It's a syndrome," one symptom of which is saying nobody reads legal scholarship, and it doesn't matter. "I should also mention that a lot of law professors don't like teaching. Or serving on committees." Lots of lawprofs are looking for "something else." And along comes blogging, and the self-justifications of the lawprofs who get into it.

12:10. Question time. They've got a microphone now. The first question is about the "performative" nature of blogging, meaning that bloggers are performing for an audience.

2:00. Back from lunch, and now Glenn Reynolds is video-ing in his talk. He did not -- as I thought he might -- laugh at us for going to the conference, us low-tech losers. Walking to lunch, we were talking about the coming video'd-in performance, and Randy Barnett commented on how Glenn was going to be a 12 foot head on the screen, then said that Glenn Reynolds actually was a 12 foot head, which is why he couldn't appear in person. Waiting for the talk to start, Jim Lindgren compared him to Orson on "Mork and Mindy." Glenn compared himself to some other pop culture character on a screen, but I've forgotten which one. Anyway, Glenn's talking about why there are so few libel suits against bloggers. Answer: Bloggers are unlikely to commit libel. They're big on support, and their mistakes get pointed out and corrected quickly. Also, bloggers are less trusted so the crap they (we) say causes less harm.

2:15: Eugene Volokh is talking about blogging and liability. Lots of detail: listen to the podcast. Should bloggers get worse treatment than traditional journalists? That's just one of many things he covered.

2:30: Eric Goldman has a very specific topic: group blogging activities. Being a solo blogger, I guess I don't have to worry about these problems... unless you commenters are causing problems.

2:38: Jim Lindgren types with one finger. You rarely see that anymore.

2:50: Betsy Malloy is talking about anonymous bloggers and what rights they have to preserve their privacy.

2:55: Daniel Solove is comparing Eugene Volokh and Jessica Cutler (the "Washingtonienne"): both so love to blog about sex.

3:45: My panel is about to start. I'm up on the dais now and feeling nervous, even though I think there will hardly be any audience left (except out there is cyberspace, so I guess I can't just fool around). I check my email. A student at Georgetown has sent me this:

4:22: I'm done! Having written my article in bloggish form, I tried to do the talk in podcasty form (which is bizarrely stressful!).

4:25: Christine Hurt is talking about blogging without tenure.

4:28: Christine says that by blogging -- as part of reading the news every day -- she forces herself to keep up with legal developments, which gives her a headstart on the serious projects she begins in the summer. If she weren't blogging, she says, she'd be more consumed with teaching during the school year and putting off reading up on the current developments. This is a good point: I know I read cases as soon as they come out, cases that, pre-blogging, I would have just downloaded for later consumption.

4:38: Howard Bashman is up to comment on Larry, Christine, and me. He also has a lot to say about his blog, How Appealing.

5:12. Nice questions. Listen to them in the podcast. Now, Harvard lawprof Charles Nesson is closing and talking about the Berkman Center, which sponsored the event. The internet, he says, has thrived because large institutions haven't figured out how to use it yet. There's a danger now, and he has a proposal, which you can hear on the podcast.

THE END!

ADDED: Douglas Berman was live-blogging here. And Larry Solum sort of disagrees with me here (that is, he thinks that to be taken seriously, a law scholar had better keep the fun stuff on a separate blog). Solum is concerned about how "academic administrators" will figure out how to reward the part of the blog that deserves to be considered part of one's professional work. I'll just say that I have not encountered this problem at the University of Wisconsin Law School and assert that that makes my school cooler than the schools that fret about clear line drawing, like a child eating dinner and worring that the meat is touching the mashed potatoes!

Apparently we the people are not allowed to ask Supreme Court Justices anything about anything, and equally apparently, Supreme Court Justices are able to arrive at the court, after a lifetime of being an zealous advocate, with the ability to separate personal biases from the matters at hand.

I think that Prof. Barnett's point is important indeed. There is nothing wrong with law professors (or other porfessionals, for that matter) blogging but using blogging as "something else" to justify one's position does seem problematic.

Someone should mention to Prof. Solum that Wiki-Law already exists, though it hasn't done so well to date. One could speculate about why it hasn't done as well as Wikipedia, although I'd venture to say it is because lawyers, on the average, are far busier than the type of people who spend a great deal of time developing wikipedia entries, and because they already have easy access to good research resources on the web.

As far as "disintermediation" goes, I think he'd be a more credible profit of such a trend if he enabled comments on his blog!

Are you sure that wasn't Camille Paglia, dressed as Kate Litvak, telling you to put your laptop/camera away. Have you asked yourself "why" these women are so threatened by you holding technological devices in your hands? Is it "the power of the blog" that they fear?

Ann: thank you for your live blog. I am listening from my office and have experienced multiple disconnections with the audio feed. Have other persons experienced similar problems with the audio feed? Your reporting is appreciciated.

The opportunity to participate in this blogging seminar in any context is terrific. With the exception of the live blogs, however, I am disappointed in the interaction options and apparent program planning.

The following link to a post on 2 Cents Worth describes a much higher standard for educational conferences - http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2006/03/27/conference-20-ten-tips-for-extending-your-education-conference/

Re comments on legal theory blog: I get a fair amount of nasty, uncharitable, and ill-informed commentary about papers by other legal scholars, about which I post on my blog. My feeling is that it would be grossly unfair to allow comments along these lines.

Prof. Solum: Yeah, I figured it was something like that. I think Ann generally does a good job of drumming those people out, and you can always delete those comments...but I understand that there is effort involved. I am a big fan of the blog, and always grateful for your efforts.

What about a policy against anonymous comments? I think that, in general, few people would be willing to make vitriolic comments if you required a real name and email address. (I do see the irony given my anonymous presence here...)

In general, I think commenting is one of the trickiest things about blogs. Done well (see, e.g. Prof. Kerr's blog) they can really advance discourse. But there is always the danger of nasty stuff.

Andy: I get that (and that has something to do with why I comment anonymously) -- I'm just saying that a real name policy provides a middle ground between having no comments, and throwing the door open entirely. Since Prof. Solum's prime concern seems to be people saying ill-considered and uncharitable things about the scholarship he links to, it seems like a signed-post policy would provide some protection there, without cutting off comment entirely.

During the two hours I listened to the bloggership conference audio feed, none of speakers provided valuable context for blogs within Internet 2.0 technologies generally. Wikis received some mention without any inciteful comments. Did any of the speakers say anything important about podcasts? What about concept maps and visual communication - related to blogs?

Simon: off the top of my head, Juan Non-Volokh was fairly interesting. Underneath Their Robes was often enjoyable, and was ruined by disclosure of Lat's identity. It all depends on what you want out of a blog -- authored blogs are likely to be cautious and polite, while more colorful commentary often comes from the anonymous (especially in the legal community). I know that a lot of young, pre-tenure scholars are worried that blogging may hurt their tenure chances.

If, like me, you enjoy both the reasoned stuff and the snarky/humorous stuff, it's nice to have a mix of signed and unsigned blogs. If I was to actively blog again, I'd definitely do it anonymously, because at present, there are too many career risks associated with signed blogging.

Simon, I'm a little surprised if that's a serious question. There are whole numbers of people to whom that applies (now, whether they'd qualify as "good" bloggers in the sense of being to your taste or whatever, that's a different issue).

It would be risky for me, though because I'm self-employed, it's slightly different than the "conditions of employment" thing.

The person at whose place I guest blog actually came close to losing his job due to his old blog, and he'll always be at risk.

I guess where I disagree with your premise regarding anonymity (or pseudonymity--there's a slight difference, I'd argue, but I don't know if that discussion is of interest) is that it automatically and in and of itself leads to less accountability.

Here's the nub of why I question that premise: Just because you (and you can read that generically; it's certainly not personal) don't know who a particular blogger is in real life doesn't mean that others don't.

In my case (and granted, I'm a teeny blogger), not only do some real-life people--including ex-coworkers, some recent and decades-old friends, and the managing editor of a current publication with which I have a contract--but so do a number of pretty prominent bloggers, as well as a few commenters, whom I haven't met personally and have no particular personal mandates of loyalty toward me based on previous ties.

It's not as if I can just go off the rails completely--or just make something up from the past--without no one noticing or, for that matter, having the ability to "bring me to justice," so to speak.

I can't imagine that my situation is unique or that I'm so exceptional. (That'd be a first, if either of those things are true.)

It's not as if I can just go off the rails completely--or just make something up from the past--without no one noticing or, for that matter, having the ability to "bring me to justice," so to speak.

Ann Althouse is held accountable to anyone for what she blogs?

And if she goes "off the rails," you'll tell her so?

I beg leave to differ. I think if Althouse goes bananas and tries to smear innocent people, her commenters would cheer her on no matter what the actual facts of the incident would happen to be.

Anyway, it is intersting how Althouse's paper is utterly devoid of any actual scholarship. I submit that is because scholarship demands accountability as a founding principle, and Althouse rejects accountablity as a founding principle.

LOL, Thersites: You've specialized in smearing me for months! And it's your commenters, not mine, who cheer the blogger on blindly. Mine would, in fact, call me on errors and meanness. You, on the other hand, have a shameless grudge against me and no one who disagrees with you bothers to participate at your place.

No, I have a perfectly legitimate "grudge" against you. I've in fact documented it. You know where. You baselessly attacked some very good people for utterly ridiculous reasons.

You could have responded honestly and with an open mind a long time ago. It's still not too late.

I mean, really. Here is my "grudge," more than anything else. You cited the comment of a woman -- an accomplished scholar -- who won a major gender discrimination lawsuit against the US military as an instance of "sexism" because you did not understand the context of the comment, or could not concede it had nothing to do with you personally. You in fact called her a sexist, when she had personally suffered an appalling level of abuse merely because she was a woman with a degree and professional qualifications who found herself in a "man's world." Could have been you, you know. Want a link to the decision in her favor? I'll supply it. Read it, and then call her a sexist once more.

Thersites: I responded to people who were making savage comments about me, who gave no context about who they were. I never spoke about them generally or about facts about them that were not apparent in a chain of comments that were about me and that were vicious and sexist. That they think they are allowed to be sexist because in some other aspect of their lives they have demonstrated feminist values is despicable. Thanks for giving me another chance to say it. I consider you despicable for carrying on against me on your blog. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Thersites: Boy, did you take my words out of context. I was responding to Simon with regard to the issue of whether anonymity/pseudonymity necessarily means there's no accountability. It's a topic he's brought up before and discussed with civility, and he asked if there were some who for work reasons thought they needed to be anonymous/pseudonymous. I was questioning, politely, one of his premises by giving another perspective.

What the heck does that have to do with your conflict with Ann?

How weird, to bring me into it and in such an out-of-context way. That comment wasn't "about" Ann, or "about" you, or "about" your conflict.

And remember YOU'RE the one who inspired this comment, by--and isn't this irony!--by ripping something out of context and challenging whether I would call someone on something if they thought they won't off the rails.

If you WANT to quote something out of context to make a point, the standard practice is to ACKNOWLEDGE that you're doing it--maybe also that you know it's a cheap shot. (Unless you don't know the difference.)

(I did that elsewhere here, today--and I wasn't doing that to draw someone else into a personal conflict, either.)

Thersites: I submit that is because scholarship demands accountability as a founding principle, and Althouse rejects accountablity as a founding principle.

Thersites, Ann wrote her paper for a blogging conference, which is a pretty recreational sort of event. Have you read any of Ann's actual scholarship? Much of it is quite good, and included in any serious federal jurisdiction casebook. Ann's paper was an attempt to suggest that maybe blogging, which can be fun and exciting, shouldn't immediately be used as a career advancement tool by lawprofs, but that rather, those profs should consider blogging for the sake of blogging.

If you'd rather read articles about Younger v. Harris, she does that too -- but this conference was about something else, something much lighter and more approachable.

Now go back home to the comforting echo-chamber of your comments thread, and ponder the pot-kettle-black problem you bring with you when you come here to castigate Ann for not having commenters who take her to task.

Thersites, we've been through this before. Try reading my entire post and understanding it. I mean, I know you won't, but my readers can. I'm not going to keep talking with you about it. Your behavior toward me has been contemptible. Crawl back into your hole.

Sorry, feeding them again. It just really bothered me to see your scholarship attacked -- I'm actually a fan. I especially enjoyed your critique of Redish's separation of powers approach to Younger v. Harris. I thought it made a number of good points.

I liked your Bush v. Gore piece too -- and interestingly, I thought it had a pleasantly bloggy quality to it. A good example of when the more reflective, more discursive, style of blogging can actually help illuminate a legal controversy.

Thersites: It seems weird that you are so hung up on this. I mean, you are probably right than Ann didn't accurately characterize the comments thread. Most of your explanations were reasonable, and looking at the thread, it didn't seem that sexist about Ann. It seemed really, really puerile, but not actually sexist. So I grant you that.

But why on earth would you think that hostile, angry demands for an apology, such as those you've so frequently hurled at Ann, are likely to solve this problem? You come across as really, really shrill, and over what -- the characterization of a thread?

Ann was really upset because a lot of people had been saying horrible things about her, and looked at your thread and took it at face value, rather than reading into it to figure out what all y'alls slang meant. She didn't know your identities, or your secrets. She knew how it looked, and responded to that.

If you had said, "Wow, I'm sorry it came across like that, we didn't mean that at all," maybe all this would have turned out differently. Instead, it seems like you've always been eager to pick a fight. And that you are still really hung up about it.

So don't act surprised that you aren't on Prof. Althouse's list of favorite people. Being right and 2.50 will get you a cup of coffee, but it doesn't make any friends. Try using some manners next time.

Marghlar: Thanks, sort of, for responding to that jerk. I really don't want him here. He has his own blog to devote to running me down. I'm just deleting everything he writes. The issue has been aired, and I will never spend time on the substance of it again. I advise readers to go back to my old posts and read the answers if they want to know my position. I do not believe I was wrong, for reasons I've already explained repeatedly. Please, in the future, don't spend time responding to this man, who clearly has a deep-seated animosity to me, which he hides under the banner of feminism. People who know how to do feminist analysis ought to cut to the core of that.